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Xbox Live Indie Games: no way to make a living

Xbox Live Indie Games get little visibility and rarely sell more than a few …

If you want to publish a console video game, there's no easier route than the Xbox Live Indie Games program. But while it's relatively easy to get your game on the service, it's hard to get it noticed. There's a lot of junk on XBLIG, so much so that a group of developers banded together at the end of last year to promote quality indie titles. There have been success stories—like the recently released FortressCraft, which managed to sell 16,000 units on the day of release—but they're not exactly common.

So with virtually no promotion, and with average earnings of just $3,800 per title, why do developers continue to create games for the platform?

"You're an upstart, brash young punk who wants to make a video game," Jason Wishnov, from Iridium Studios, told Ars. "You have no or minimal industry experience, and you enjoy Mountain Dew. Where else are you going to turn?"

Iridium recently released a well received game called Sequence, a mash-up of a rhythm game and an RPG. Despite receiving positive coverage from places like Edge and Kill Screen magazines, the game only managed to sell around 2,000 copies, which Wishnov describes as "a bit of a flop."

The team did manage to recoup the cost of development, but that was largely due to a very successful Kickstarter campaign, which raised $2,600 on an original goal of just $600.

While Wishnov doesn't have any regrets, he explains that Iridium is looking at PC and mobile as potential options for future projects, and would likely only return to XBLIG for a much smaller scale project. Sequence took around two and a half years to develop.

"It's not financially viable to do a larger-scale project and [not] expect with any certainty to make some money," he told Ars.

Sequence

Cthulhu can't cash in

That's true even for the more successful games on XBLIG. Zeboyd Games is one of the most visible developers on the platform, developing charming retro-style RPGs like Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World. The former managed to sell around 50,000 copies for $1 each, while the latter moved a little more than 16,000 copies at $3 apiece. Those are impressive numbers by XBLIG standards, but that doesn't necessarily make them satisfying for the development team.

"I think our games could sell a lot better than they did with a better platform and more visibility," Zeboyd's Robert Boyd told Ars. "The sales for Cthulhu Saves the World were particularly disappointing—we put a lot of heart and soul into the game over a significantly longer period of development time and yet that extra effort didn't result in a similar increase in revenue."

In order to test this theory, Boyd will take both games, bundled together, to the PC. The enhanced versions will be available on both Steam and Gamersgate later this month, and one of the main motivating factors appears to be money. Zeboyd managed to raise nearly $7,000 to support development of the PC versions of the games, and is hoping that the much larger PC user base will be a more financially viable platform for the studio's games. While Zeboyd's next game will also be released on both XBLIG and PC, it's likely that the studio will leave Microsoft's indie platform for good after this.

"We'd like to make games for a living and make even more impressive games than we've already made—this isn't possible without more money than we've been making so far," Boyd explained.

The somewhat negative perception of the Xbox indie games platform hasn't stopped developers, however. More than 1,400 games have been published on XBLIG since its debut in 2008, and some, like Avatar Paintball, have managed to gross hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. Those success stories are exceedingly rare, and most developers seem to be well aware of that. Instead of monetary gains, many developers are simply using the service as a way to gain experience.

Spooky Squid games is doing just that with its upcoming release They Bleed Pixels, a violent, pixel art-infused action platformer.

"It's a bit of a calculated risk going with XBLIG," Miguel Sternberg, one half of Spooky Squid, told Ars. "We wanted to get some experience coding for a console and liked that XBLIG was a relatively open, hassle-free marketplace like the iPhone app store. One bonus for going with a console is that we can count on everyone playing with a gamepad, something you can't count on when developing for the PC."

They Bleed Pixels

Sternberg doesn't have any predictions for game sales, instead saying that while "the game is very solid and offers a different platforming experience then the existing games on XBLIG...it's still a very chaotic marketplace."

Don't quit your day job

The platform could certainly use some improvements. Things like an enhanced storefront, increased visibility throughout the rest of Xbox Live, more flexible pricing, and maybe even integration with the Kinect API would go a long way towards making XBLIG a place where more than a handful of game developers can make a living.

"The only way it would be more viable is to add achievements and more price points," explained Luke Schneider, the one-man development team behind the excellent radiangames series of XBLIG shooters. "Allowing offline play would be fantastic as well. In other words, make it a more even playing field like Apple's app store. But I don't believe MS will do that due to pressure from publishers. XBLIG is what it is now, and my only hope for something like it succeeding more thoroughly is if Sony or MS pushes an open development channel with the launch of their next console(s), whenever that ends up being."

So, no, chances are you won't be able to quit your day job by releasing a game on XBLIG. And, yes, virtually all of the developers we spoke to are considering moving on from the platform. But all seem to view their experience as valuable, which in the end is part of the point of XBLIG: it's a place where virtually anyone can make a game that can be played on a console. Devs just need to know what they're getting into.

"All developers should be aware of what XBLIG is and is not," said Wishnov. "Don't have unrealistic expectations!"

The Quote he used failed.... but the article talks about promoting XBLIG on the Dash.

In fact August 22nd to September will be the Indie Games Summer Uprising which will again have 10 Indie Games being promoted on the Dash. The Dream Build Play contest also promotes Xbox Live Indie Games on the dash.

Granted indie games are only being promoted about 3 times a year, for about a month at a time, right now and not every week or day. It would be nice to get a promotion every week on the dash for a new release/hot seller/top rated. Microsoft listened to the Indie devs and came to the indie devs for the Winter Uprising... so perhaps they will do a show like the top 5 hot indie games like they do for WP7.

If you want to make a living, program for the #1 gaming platform in the world. iOS.

Another person to continue this farse, the reality is only a very small handful of people have made enough money on ios to 'make a living', the majority of developers with quality applications make only enough to cover the costs and for those making crap apps well they wont be making anything.

You only have a very small number of stand out apps/games that have ever made substantial revenue, yet you hear people like this guy who have NO development experience at all keep up with this ios farce that if you make apps for iphone you become rich.

We've had a highly rated game on ios, listed as an apple staff favorite and rated #13 in the top free section for the trial version, yet the paid version made a little over $3000, not even close to enough to cover costs. The reality is ios is a flee market full of junk apps released hourly that bury the good games and apps, and with the majority of end users wanting to pay either free or 99 cents its impossible to sell enough copies to justify developing for the platform.

The only platform where indies have any success is on the PC - an open platform where you can choose your price point, able to advertise to customers directly and dont have the competition of junk apps right next to yours allows you to easily make a profit provided you make a good app/game.

Wouldn't the mobile platforms (iOS/Android/etc.) be a better idea? Far larger potential audience, though obviously you can't make the exact same games work.

For me you sure as hell could port the exact game over from XBLIG to Android; I got an Xperia Play. Although controls would be a bit of a burden to port, but they do have special touchscreen plug ins that you can use now that devs lease out for less than a $100 I think.

If you want to make a living, program for the #1 gaming platform in the world. iOS.

The only platform where indies have any success is on the PC - an open platform where you can choose your price point, able to advertise to customers directly and dont have the competition of junk apps right next to yours allows you to easily make a profit provided you make a good app/game.

How do you distribute? How do you market? How do you publish? Those are not trivial problems to solve and are often bigger problems than developing the game itself.

Just to clarify something the reason you have to be online to play an XBLIG is because of the indie game peer review system. XBLIGs are not reviewed by Microsoft or the ESRB in any way (unless for some reason a dispute pops up in the peer review process that requires their ruling on something), so Microsoft is very hands-off about the whole process. You submit a game, and then the other indie devs review the game based on the criteria Microsoft sets. However the reviewers aren't perfect and it's possible for something to slip past that shouldn't have been allowed. In that case MS would need to pull the game, and to make sure people can't play pulled games you have to have a XBL connection while playing. After all you wouldn't want Little Billy to be able to play "Sleepy Time Adventures" after someone else reported it when they unlocked the secret Goat Rape level now would you?

As for the rest of the article, I think most of the major points about what's good and bad about XBLIG are touched on. It's a platform that allows great freedom, but it gets almost no support from Microsoft because they want to push their more profitable XBLA and Xbox games. There are constant issues with the service that MS won't spend the resources to fix, problems going on like rating manipulation, the new release list freezing so new games don't get attention in one of the very few places they can, and no support for achievements, leaderboards (all XBLIG leader boards are ad-hoc peer to peer systems), or internet connectivity whatsoever. It's telling how well advertised the platform is when there are quite a few comments here from Xbox owners who had no idea it even existed, or thought it was the same thing as Xbox Live Arcade.

Yes, there is a lot of rubbish in there. A lot of it. But after 3 years there are a ton of really good games in there as well, and most of them are only a buck. Sequence, Cthulhu, Ballistic, QuadSmash, Miner Dig Deep, Toy Stunt Bike, Abaddon... those are some great ones off the top of my head, and none over $5. It makes me sad to see so many really good games absolutely tank. Now don't get me wrong, the devs aren't blameless. They picked the platform, and should have known what they were getting into when they started. Right now XBLIG is treated as a hobbyist platform by MS, and they certainly aren't doing anything to help raise those devs beyond that level aside from Dream Build Play.

tl;dr version: The online connection is required in case something bad slips past peer review so MS can pull the gameI agree MS does a terrible job of supporting the platform and give it absolutely no love.There are a lot of crap games in there, but there are some really really really good ones as well, and cheap!

I currently have an Indie in development. I work on it with full knowledge that my efforts may never reap the financial rewards that would allow me to make it my full time job. I'm actually writing this at my "real" job. As described in the article, for me it's not about the money. Now I know that sounds douchey, like "I don't need money, I'm an artist maaaaan!" The truth is if it was my full time job the game might be done now, but I would be poor. So here I am, working on it when I can, and making a living to handle my real world responsibilities.

The number one motivation is to make a game that I've always wanted to play. Number two is to share the game with friends and as many people out there who might enjoy it. Next is to gain knowledge and experience that I can use on future projects or my resume. The tantalizing, but mostly fictional, dangling carrot of cash at the end of the road isn't really on the radar. I know this a deal breaker for most and the platform, and gamers in general, are worse off because of it.

Unfortunately the forces at work that make that carrot so ghostly are largely out of the dev's control. As much as I hate commercials, lack of advertising and visibility on the platform are the biggest reasons. Next is the myriad 'shovelware' games that clog the platform and bury stronger titles. Limited price points, file size, weak rating system, online requirement, and lack of achievements round out the list. There is nothing short of a truckload of cash or a Microsoft manegerial position that can change these and if you have either you're probably not going to spend any time on XBLIG.

Despite all this, there has never been a simpler system to independently create a console release. However flawed it may be, this is the technology my 13 year-old self dreamed of. So we work with what we have and all hope is not lost. Quality, the biggest detail the developer can control, is steadily increasing. The DreamBuildPlay contest has entered its judging phase. As we speak several motivated community members are planning a "Summer Uprising" to shine some light on the scene (http://www.indiegames-uprising.com/). Also, many thanks go to Andrew Webster and Ben Kuchera for writing articles like this. Any intelligent discussion on the subject will only help to build the momentum that is out there. Whether that leads to the rise of XBLIG or a crash of developers running to other platforms has yet to be determined. In any case the work continues. XNA code is portable to PC after all.

If you want to make a living, program for the #1 gaming platform in the world. iOS.

The only platform where indies have any success is on the PC - an open platform where you can choose your price point, able to advertise to customers directly and dont have the competition of junk apps right next to yours allows you to easily make a profit provided you make a good app/game.

How do you distribute? How do you market? How do you publish? Those are not trivial problems to solve and are often bigger problems than developing the game itself.

Really???

If you can develop a game or application finding these resources is not hard at all.

Distribute - Setup a webserver and allow people to download your applications/games - this is known as 'shareware' and has been around for decades. Don't want to do that - if your game is any good than put your game on steam and let steam distribute and sell your games. Dozens of ways to sell your applications easily - paypal, trialpay, regnow, digital river and the dozens of shareware payment systems available, or setup a merchant account - your choice.

Market - create a .pad file and submit your app/game to the thousand upon thousands of shareware sites out there; use a tool like robosoft to automate that process. Put advertisments on gaming websites, magazines, run promotions, offer free trials or other apps to get people to come to your website. Marketing you pretty much have to do on any platform; but when you have to compete with free or 99 cents on ios your marketing budget is going to be much much smaller so you can make up the revenue on total sales. When you have a desktop app you can charge more provided you have a substanially better game.

Not trivial but not as complex as people try to make it sound either, and substanially cheaper than the 30% cut that ios charges without giving you any real promotion whatsoever. What ios gives you is sheer number of potential customers; but just like a flee market its next to impossible to stand out when everyone is pitching similar wares for 99 cents, and a good chunk of those are complete garbage - giving a bad taste to most customers. On the pc you have an even larger base but you have an open ecosystem so you dont have to directly compete right next to the crap applications. When you have a closed ecosystem its near impossible for your applications/games to stand out, and prices plumet so low its impossible for devs to be able to make profits.

I think this article ties two distinct problems together that need to be separated. One is how to sell a game as an indie producer. The other is how to get noticed in the game industry. While Microsoft may not be seemingly doing much from the consumer side, they are doing a lot on the academic side. I work for a university with a top 10 rated game program. There are plenty of opportunities to get your work seen. Lets face it, being commercially successful is the hardest way to break into the game industry. Our students go on co-ops, submit work for industry review (in a non public setting) and have a lot of chances to enter design contests and such. And the sad truth is that we STILL tell our freshman coming in that only 10% of them will make it into the games industry. Its a very competitive industry. We only take the creme of the crop into the program to start with. And then there is a 90% chance they won't end up in games. Plus you have a number of other universities doing the same thing.

As for the first problem, being an indie game maker, I think the answer to that is banding together. If indie game makers created a resource for reviewing and publishing indie games, they could counter the entrenched position of companies like EA. The first place a ever saw Doom or heretic or many other games was the shareware rack. The humblebundle has also been very successful. You also have things like gog.com. They don't write their own games, they just fix other peoples stuff.

Stuff like this is why my studio is going the extra mile to release through Steam and XBLA/PSN with a full (if lightweight) marketing budget. You can only do so much with XBLIG, it honestly feels more like a "game-making hobby" zone then a "serious design" zone. There's just a lot of stuff on there that makes me grimace when I see it, and the good stuff struggles to stand out.

Cthulu would probably do a lot better if it was simply repackaged as a cheap XBLA title, and from what I've heard it would probably do pretty well. XBLIG is more of an experimental area then a place to make sales.

2,000 copies for a favorably reviewed game with a low price tag is nuts.

With a user base of over 43 million, at the very least people just casually trying the game for kicks should be around 50k-100k at the minimum.

I cannot fathom a decent game only selling 2k.

Again, its exposure. If you ask a random Xbox player what they think of "Cthulhu Saves the World" I imagine most of the time the person will have no idea what you are talking about. Most don't know it exists.

Programming has become almost as ubiquitous as writing. Eventually the market reaches a saturation point. And, as others have pointed out, when you have a lot of mediocrity drowning out the stellar, folks can get overwhelmed. Taste-test panel research has shown folks are more willing to make decisions when there are fewer options, not more. Folks don't want to spend hours wading through titles to find "the good ones".

To quote Mr. Sternberg of Spooky Squid, "One bonus for going with a console is that we can count on everyone playing with a gamepad, something you can't count on when developing for the PC."

Here's an idea, Mr. Sternberg, make the controls work on keyboard/mouse as well as gamepad. Problem solved. It's quotes like the one above that tip me off that perhaps some of the developers aren't all that bright.

Here's an idea, Mr. Sternberg, make the controls work on keyboard/mouse as well as gamepad. Problem solved. It's quotes like the one above that tip me off that perhaps some of the developers aren't all that bright.

And here I was thinking I may be the only one to have thought "uh, if you can't even code for keyboard... I'm not even going to bother looking at it."

Sounds like you and I were thinking the same thing on this particular matter. Perhaps there is some merit to the claim, but reading it does make it seem like more junkware climbing and strangling the other indie wares from reaching the light of profit.

Well my post is admittedly a bit harsh but it just struck me as an incredibly short-sighted and/or foolish reason to not develop their title as a PC game, too. Pretty lame.

The games I have released on XBLIG can be played on the PC without a controller. I developed them that way so that my friend can playtest them.

One even had twin-stick shooter controls that primarily used the keyboard for movement and firing... but it's not ideal, and kind of a pain... but adapting the controller to keyboard and mouse is doable.

I agree that what he said was short-sighted. He can get it to work on the PC but it definately would not be the same experience as using the controller especially for a twin-stick shooter.

Anyone posting such BS as "it's easy to make a game work on the PC, just add keyboard/mouse control" is an idiot who's only demonstrating that they've never designed or worked on a game before. It just makes for a shit PC game. I know some borderline autistic nuts out there play Super Meat Boy with their keyboard, but really?! It takes way more than that, and focusing on developing a targeted high quality experience is a way better way to be successful than to try to make something work everywhere.

Anyone posting such BS as "it's easy to make a game work on the PC, just add keyboard/mouse control" is an idiot who's only demonstrating that they've never designed or worked on a game before. It just makes for a shit PC game. I know some borderline autistic nuts out there play Super Meat Boy with their keyboard, but really?! It takes way more than that, and focusing on developing a targeted high quality experience is a way better way to be successful than to try to make something work everywhere.

Nice "marketing speak" at the end there. Looks like you may have a promising career in that field, at least, more than game design if it's THAT difficult for you to make a game work well with a keyboard and mouse. I also like your preset bias that someone had a mental disease (autism) if they wanted to play a game without a gamepad. Nice one.

Like a few people on this thread, I have my first game currently in playtesting on XBLIG and I knew what I was getting into. My games have been a hobby and just having people enjoy them is enough for me.

Though, from some of the posts on this thread, I'm confused by the attitude put against it.

Things like: "I saw some game a guy made for his kid and decided to ignore XBLIG completely."Really, you saw one app that you didn't like and shucked off the channel completely? Did you stop watching a Movie genre because one movie in that area on Netflix sucked? Have you ever stopped going to a website because they posted one article you didn't agree with or found lame? Seriously?

Did you notice that every XBLIG (as well as any XBLA game) has a free trial? Were you ever curious about a game in the list? Give it a try? At most, you lose like 5 minute of your life. What do you have to lose?

Yes, XBLIG has a low bar for entry. I made my entire game for $140. ($100 for this cool control set and $40 to a guy to draw me some box art.) If I sell 140 copies, good for me. I don't? Good for me. I agree, there are some really horrendous "games" on there. But, there are horrendous games on the DS. It doesn't mean I pitch my DS into the nearest sewer because Barbie's Dream Horse Mansion 2 exists. I merely avoid it and try out games that look interesting.

There are good games on there. And think about it, you could buy 15 of them for the same amount you paid for that crappy XBLA version of Wing Commander that choked the memories of the game it is based on and had no one on any game server playing it... ever.

All I am saying is give the dang thing a chance. Put down that box for "Brownscreen Shooter 4: Military Burping Limited Edition" that you are about to drop $60 on, only to find out that you played this game 20 times before and are bored with it and drop $1 on something in XBLIG.... like say... "Level Up!" when it is released.

i think the situation of XBLIG developers is not very different from small developers on IOS/android. Its like a person trying to get over a 20-foot wall against thousands of other people trying to do the same.

also,

Quote:

One bonus for going with a console is that we can count on everyone playing with a gamepad, something you can't count on when developing for the PC."

Gaming is one of the worst industries to get into if you want to make money. You have to be on a good team, make a great product, have great marketing, and get lucky. You probably have to be a founder of a company.

Banking on getting rich through gaming is like banking on making a living by playing in the NBA. There are much better ways to make it.

You do gaming if you are young and don't mind giving up a lot to work in the industry.

If you want to make a living, program for the #1 gaming platform in the world. iOS.

Hahahahahaha don't feed the troll guys.

iOS isn't the great game platform you're looking for. It's every bit as bad as the other platforms with crap shovelware games and a few standout hits. Damn it, I fed the troll.

Haven't the vast majority of those hits been from small/indie developers, though? I'm struggling to think of any or many that were from major brand names in the gaming market. And isn't that the point here? As a developer iOS is just as competitive as any other platform in terms of volume and ratios of good to bad, but the difference is that the playing field is completely level. Your game has just as much chance of success as any other game. There are no artificial barriers to exposure or promotion just because some major names don't like the idea of it. The OP may have been trolling, but they have a point.

A problem I see with XBLIG is that a lot of people don't have access to them yet, myself included. I just recently started to get into XNA just for the fun of it. But if I wanted to make an XBLIG, I wouldn't even be able to. I can get a Membership (don't recall what they call it) to be able to deploy my game to the 360. But I'm not allowed to neither submit the game, nor can I buy any XBLIG games. As some people already said in the comments: they didn't even know this service exists.

I think because of the limited availabilty of the service, a lot of potential buyers and also potential hit indie games are being kept out of the system, thus making it not very interesting for a lot of game devs. Whereas Steam and other platforms can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

I somehow do get why MS wouldn't allow anyone to submit a game. They need to pay these people. So depending on where you're from, this can be complicated (taxes etc...). But I just don't get why I can't even access the service.

I think that should be the name of your indie game. And if someone asks what the connection between the title and your game is, you simply huff up and say:

*long drawn out sigh* "If I've got to explain it to you the point is already lost maaaaan."

Then you can start talking about how fair trade coffee is really just fair trade rape and it's only the phonies that get caught up in that shit. And then everyone will think you're super hip and buy your game.

I see a screenshot of a JRPG clone with SNES graphics and a rather graphical platformer with SNES graphics, and a video of a rhythm game that looks like a horribly convoluted love child of Final Fantasy III and Dance Dance Revolution.

I know there are only so many concepts to explore, but surely people can do more than this, right? How about picking up an N64 era-technology game that wasn't refined/improved on the Gamecube or Wii, and improving that in terms of scope, depth and artwork? With episode releases if you have to?

I've been working on an Indie title for XBLIG for some time, I've never expected it to sell great numbers I just wanted to make the game I wanted. Rather then the game that the publisher, producer, designer wants to make when I'm at work. Developing with XNA and C# makes a nice change from working in C++ and the XDK at work.

I do plan on releasing it on steam but I've heard it can take a very long time for steam to get back to indie deve's for getting steamworks access.

The point still stands though, MS needs to put more time into promoting XBLIG in general, I don't expect them to promote individual games but the general Xbox using public needs to know its there and they need to get people looking at it. As well as getting it to more counties, if feels that WP7 market place is getting far more love from MS then the XBox one, despite the fact the sales numbers on it are currently even less then Xbox.

(minor disclaimer: I run a XBLIG review website - though I'm a wee bit behind on reviews at the minute!)

VideoGameTech wrote:

Directly to the point of this article: I didn't even know there was an XBLIG channel! I knew about XBLA and that was it. Talk about poor exposure! As to having to be connected online while playing the game, that's a non-starter. I refuse to buy a game that requires me to be online even when playing an offline component - and have seen the same sentiment from many posters in Ars.

So even though I buy indie/small developer games, MS has made it so I won't ever buy XBLIG games.

To be fair to Microsoft, the reason for this is simple: as XBLIG games aren't reviewed by the ESRB (or local equivalent), they need a way to be able to restrict access to titles which are found to have inappropriate or IP-infringing content. F'instance, I know there was at least one title with overly adult content which managed to get onto the platform, and there's been several which have "borrowed" music and graphics from other sources.

It's just the price you have to accept for a service where people can - and do - make anything and can make money from their creations.

(Steam doesn't have this problem because the games are vetted by Valve prior to release. Apple has a similar issue, but - possibly because iOS devices are viewed as multi-purpose devices, rather than gaming devices - just remove the app from the iStore and leave it at that)

Personally, I think XBLIG's biggest problem is that it doesn't really seem to have any champions within Microsoft (the people who originally dreamed it up and got Community games onto the Xbox 360 have long since moved on) - and it's also a potential threat to XBLA, with it's low prices and high volume of releases.

Arguably, it's also suffering from the fact that while it was originally launched as an idealistic "community" experiment, where indie developers could learn and experiment, it's since become something of an "alternative" commercial channel. As a result, you have very polished and well-presented games (e.g. Duodecad) sitting next to primitive looking first-efforts (e.g. Knights of Jadora). And inbetween these, there's significant number of "exploitative" games, ranging from seedy titles such as "The Perfect Pickup Line" and FishCraft (a rip off of Angry Birds, which also tried to attract attention from the Minecraft crowd).

Fundamentally, you can't have a system which is both a commercial channel and a developer sandbox, as it simply leads to too many inconsistencies in the user experience. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's a simple answer...

I see the same issues from the article in both the Apple and Google smartphone markets. Specifically, there's too much noise. Or more accurately put, it's too hard to casually or randomly discover the nuggets of gold buried among all the rubble. Sure, if I already know about an app or game I can find it- but for just browsing to see if something "looks good" they all suck.

Currently the only real solution is marketing- your best bet is if you can Astroturf enough sites to hopefully get your program to "go viral" or even get a review on a high-profile site. Once you build enough presence it will sustain itself, but marketing doesn't come easily for a lot of people and it's a full-time job. Many Indie Devs don't have the time, know-how, or monetary resources to be successful with it.